There are numerous search engines available to a user. Some of them are considered to be general purpose search engines (such as Yandex™, Google™ and the like). Others are considered to be vertical search engines—i.e. search engines dedicated to a particular topic of search—such as Momondo™ search engine dedicated to searching flights.
Irrespective of which search engine is used, the search engine is generally configured to receive a search query from a user, to perform a search and to return a ranked SERP to the user. Several attempts have been made to improve the design of the SERP in the strive to enable the user to more easily and faster interact with search results—for example in the context of providing a user with one or more suggested search queries while the user is inputting a textual input (which may also be referred to, in some instances, as a prefix) to form a search query.
Approaches aiming at providing content item relating to a suggested search query while the user is inputting the textual input have also been developed. One such approach comprises the method and system depicted in U.S. Pat. No. 8,676,828. The method comprises identifying display data associated with content item for transmission to the user along with one or more completions in response to receiving the user input. The method comprises identifying a suggestion most likely to constitute the request and selecting a content item associated with the suggestion. The method also comprises obtaining a content item associated with a first dominant query that has a quality score that is greater than a threshold.
Even though the above-described method and system may allow providing the user with a content item associated with a suggested search query while the user is inputting a search query, improvements may still be desirable, in particular, improvements aiming at improving (1) accuracy and/or (2) processing speed and/or (3) memory usage in automatically identifying display data associated with a content item associated with a suggested search query upon receipt of a user input.